Food Advertising and Women: The 1970's

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Something that I love about this class is that you can easily bring the role of advertising and food into the conversation. On average, we are bombarded with three thousand ads a day, many of which are food, which come in dichotomous forms: greasy, calorie-laden burgers, versus highly processed, 100 calorie diet snack packs. We really cannot win.

Here is an ad above, now all over the Internet, from 1971.

Let's look at some of the interesting things here:

1. This chick has some crazy Twiggy-esque eyelashes: Of course advertising moguls caught on fast with the spiky lash trend and therefore, it made its way into every genre of advertising around. Her lashes alone probably attracted the attention of many young teens and twenty somethings concerned about her image and how she can make herself conventionally attractive.
2. She's licking the cone very suggestively: Sexual innuendo is clearly playing a big role here; Young girl wants to control her image-->Young girl eats sugar-->Young girl is seen as playful, sexy, and attractive to men.
3. Because ice cream will totally help you undereat: I'm not sure where this "diet" idea came from, but it's one of the most absurd ones I've heard, and there are a lot of absurd "diets" out there.
4. And finally, why should we undereat?!: The ad could have well just stated, 'Sugar can be the willpower you need to starve yourself'. Sure, it's extreme, but isn't that what undereating is? What about just eating - normally? Had there been more awareness about the dangers of eating disorders back in the '70's, maybe there would have been backlash to this advertisement (as there should be now for practically every ad targeted towards young women). This ad could easily be manipulated for pro-ana websites, sites that encourage young women with eating disorders to continue starving themselves for the sake of "willpower". That word is used everywhere in the eating disorder community, to a frightening extent. Americans are all about willpower: the more control you have over every minutiae thing in your life, the more successful you appear.

The thing is, that's all an illusion. The thing is, I'm not so sure willpower is the thing we need to strive for. In the end, the more we try to control, the more lost we become.